He’d been working on this deal for almost two years. It had taken a lot of time, a lot of risk to bring the wily warlord this close to striking a bargain. If he did manage to bring it off without getting himself or Billy killed, they could call it quits, get out of the mercenary business. Retire. Settle down.
“Then all there is left to do is wait for the rains to quit.”
Both men watched the torrential downpour beyond the window and were silent.
“I’d best be gettin’ along. I drove most of the night,” Billy announced, letting his chair ease back onto all four legs. Brett was being pretty closemouthed this morning. But Billy decided not to push him. This deal was the biggest thing they’d ever done. It was also way out of his league. Brett had never said so but Billy knew he was feeling the strain, too. Khen Sa wasn’t your ordinary two-bit criminal. Hell, the man fielded a goddamn army up there. It wasn’t like rousting some small-time pusher on Patpong Road, or setting up some greedy fool running drugs on the side, like the Vietnamese colonel—what was his name, Ky?—they’d engineered into taking a fall the year before. No, it wasn’t the same at all. Khen Sa was big time with a capital T.
“Any problems along the way?” Brett turned away from the window. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his slacks and stared at Billy with narrowed eyes.
“Nope. Why’d you ask?” Billy knew perfectly well why his friend wanted to know where he’d been. He’d been due back yesterday. He waited, keeping his thoughts to himself.
“What took you so long? Bad roads?”
“No. I made a little stop on the way back from Chiang Rai, that’s all.”
“What kind of stop?”
“Just a little visit to Father Dolph’s camp.”
“Why?”
Billy blinked at the cutting edge in Brett’s voice. “I thought I’d say hello to Ahnle. See how her English is comin’ along.”
“Ahnle? The Hlông girl who works with Rachel?”
“Yeah, Ahnle. What about it?” Billy was on the defensive and he knew it.
The strange thing was he really hadn’t had any intention of detouring off the main road to the camp. He’d just done it. He hadn’t been able to get the girl out of his thoughts, and it bothered him. He’d spent less than an hour in her company, exchanged only a few words. She was young enough to be his daughter, for God’s sake. Yet he still woke up most nights in a cold sweat, hard and aching, dreaming of Ahnle.
“Nothing, man. It’s just not like you to blow off the plan that way.”
“Yeah, I know.” Billy stared down at his empty coffee cup. He’d had no business trying to see Ahnle again. He’d done it to convince himself to recognize her for the child she was. It hadn’t worked.
“What did you two have to talk about?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? I would have thought her English would have improved considerably by now, with Rachel Phillips as a tutor.”
“It probably has. I didn’t talk to her.” Here was the hard part. “She wasn’t there, man, and neither was Rachel.”
“Where are they?” Brett asked.
No one knew Tiger Jackson better than Billy Todd. Still, he could detect little emotion other than natural curiosity on his friend’s hard-edged features. Maybe he was wrong in thinking Brett was as interested in Rachel as he was in Ahnle.
“Down near Surin somewhere. At one of the camps on the Kampuchean border.”
“What the hell are they doing there? The Khmer Rouge are stirring things up all around there, on both sides of the border.”
“That’s what I wanted to know. I hunted up that French doctor, Reynard. He said there was cholera.” The word hung in the air between them. Cholera, a disease as deadly today as it had been throughout the centuries, capable of killing hundreds in a few days’ time.
“Why the hell did Rachel go?”
“She nursed some Vietnamese nationals through an outbreak during the war. She volunteered to go and took Ahnle with her to help out. Dr. Reynard was against the idea but Father Dolph let them go.”
“He probably couldn’t have stopped her if he’d tried.” Brett turned back to the window as if Billy’s explanation answered some unspoken question of his own. He looked relaxed, at ease, but his hand on the window frame had curled into a fist. “How long have Rachel and the girl been there?”
“Three, four weeks.”
“Has anybody heard from them? Are they all right?”
Billy knew why he was asking. The camps on the border were crowded, grim settlements as large as cities. Crime and violence were common, and there was always the threat of attack by the Khmer Rouge or other antigovernment factions who crossed the border almost at will.
“Doc says Rachel won’t let Ahnle near any of the cholera patients, and they’re both all right.” He couldn’t keep the relief out of his voice. She was just a kid, dammit. He shouldn’t care so much.
Brett swung his head around to eye him sharply. “Do Rachel’s brothers know where she is?”
Billy snorted, halfway between a laugh and a hoot. “No way. The Doc said Rachel told Father Dolph she’d pin his ears back if he gave them so much as a hint of what she was doing.”
Brett shook his head. “Poor old Micah. She’s some woman,” he added, almost as if to himself.
“Maybe she’ll stop over in the city on her way back north.”
“Maybe.” Brett didn’t sound as if he expected her to do any such thing. Billy wondered what was going on between the two of them. His old friend sounded as off balance as he was. Women. Hell. They’d gotten along fine without them for twenty years. Now. Bam, they were on your mind day and night.
How hard had Tiger fallen for Rachel’s blue-gray eyes and that sad, pretty smile? Hard enough to risk the deal they’d been working on all these months? Billy didn’t know for sure. He didn’t ask either, even though it did seem to him that Rachel Phillips was worth the risk. She was just the kind of woman Tiger Jackson needed.
SUNSHINE. REAL SUNSHINE.
Rachel woke to the warmth of it on her face, surprised to find she’d dozed off so close to her destination. She looked out the window of her train compartment, blinking against the brightness of the late September morning. The train was slowing its headlong pace, moving into the outskirts of Bangkok. The change in speed was what must have awakened her. She stretched and yawned, kneading a kink at the back of her neck with her fingers. Sleeping sitting up was never comfortable.
“Good morning,” Ahnle said.
“Good morning.” Rachel smiled at her young friend. “Ahnle, look. Elephants.” She pressed her face to the window. Outside, a family of work elephants moved alongside the track, trunk to tail, baby placed protectively between mother and aunt, as their trainer maneuvered them into position beside a pile of railroad ties. Rachel watched them for as long as she could.
“There are elephants everywhere here,” Ahnle said, shaking her head. “I think you should be used to them by now.”
“Never,” Rachel laughed, pulling a comb out of her bag and running it through her silver-threaded hair. “I love elephants. Although, you’re right, there do seem to be a lot of them around.”
“Yes,” Ahnle agreed dryly. “And also the large, smelly piles of…”
“…manure,” Rachel prompted hastily before any less suitable word came out of her mouth.
“Manure, they leave it everywhere they walk.” Ahnle curled her lip. “Ugh.”
“I wish we could have stayed in Surin for the elephant roundup in November,” Rachel said wistfully.
“We have been in Surin long enough.”
“I guess you’re right. Ten weeks is a long time to stay away.” The danger of the cholera outbreak at the huge camp on the Thai-Kampuchean border was over and they were needed back at Camp Six. She was glad Father Dolph had talked her out of her fear of taking Ahnle along with her. She would have missed the girl sadly if they’d been separated so long.
The train passed ov
er a flooded canal, or klong, as the Thais called them. She watched several long-tailed boats streak along the swollen waterway. Perhaps she’d buy a small wooden carving of an elephant to give to Ahnle, to remember their journey by, something she could take with her when she left the camp to start a life of her own.
“I wonder if we have time to do some shopping between trains?” she mused, pulling a timetable out of her bag. “Three hours until the train for Chiang Mai leaves. Would you like to see some of the city?”
Ahnle shook her head. She’d been looking out the window for a long time, watching the city close in around them. “It is too big. I think we would be lost here.”
“We would take a taxi,” Rachel explained. “And come back to the train station the same way. We wouldn’t get lost.”
Ahnle shook her head. “No. Please, I will stay here.”
“All right. We’ll stay here.” Ahnle had never ridden on a train before they boarded in Surin. She’d been working long, hard hours under trying conditions during the cholera outbreak. It was understandable that she should be apprehensive of venturing out into one of the biggest, busiest cities in the world.
Suddenly Rachel, also, found herself not so anxious to set off on the proposed shopping trip. She was tired and grubby. Mostly tired, bone-achingly tired, and had been for weeks. But that wasn’t the sole reason for her sudden attack of indecision. If she left the station there was the possibility, however remote, she might meet Brett Jackson somewhere in the city. Never mind that the odds were millions to one against just such a meeting. She was afraid to go.
“I would like breakfast,” Ahnle said. “I’m not afraid to leave the train. I just do not want to…shop….”
“And I could do with a wash.” Rachel closed the snap on her heavy tote and stood up. “I think you’re right. Breakfast and a wash is a much better idea than shopping.”
She was happy enough to find something to do that would take her mind off thoughts of the mysterious and dangerous Tiger Jackson. Even the nights she fell asleep so exhausted she couldn’t find the energy to take off her clothes or shoes, the moment she shut her eyes, his face would be there, silhouetted against the velvety darkness behind her eyelids. A hard-featured face, bronzed, remote, his profile edged in the memory of silvery jungle moonlight. And when she dreamed, she dreamed of him, not the nightmare past or the uncertain future. But those dreams were fantasy, nothing more.
It was true, she was coming to think of this beautiful and exotic land as her home. The cares and concerns of the homeless people she worked with were becoming her own. Yet, she must also face reality. She was no longer young. Her resources were limited. The plain truth of the matter was that she was alone, no matter how much she cared for Ahnle, Father Dolph and the others.
Alone.
As always, the stinging ache of loss assailed her, darkening her mood just as a cloud passing before the sun dimmed the light of a summer day. The pain came less often now as time passed, but still, she mourned the death of her child and knew she always would. She also knew she could never have another child, even if by some miracle she found someone to love.
That, in light of the terror of the past, was the way she’d always expected it to be.
Until she met Tiger Jackson and miracles became a regular part of her dreams.
CHAPTER SIX
AHNLE STEPPED OUT OF the small wooden cottage she shared with Rachel and shaded her eyes against the brightness of the sun. It was October now, Rachel had told her, naming the moon time that her people called the Moon of the Mists because the rains were over and the wet forest steamed in the warmth of the sun.
It was going to be a nice day, she decided. The heat of the sun was strong on her face. Its brightness would help dry up the last of the mud around the cottage. She wondered if this afternoon they could plant the seeds Rachel’s mother had sent all the way from America. She smiled as she set her conical-shaped straw hat on her head and tightened the strings. She was anxious to see these Big Boy tomatoes that Rachel was so fond of talking about. She had never tasted one. She was curious to know what they were like.
She dropped to her knees to check the small patch of turned soil in front of the cottage and deemed it ready for planting. In her village in the mountains the soil was stony and thin. Here it was rich and red, but covered over with huts and buildings and trampled down by the comings and goings of thousands of feet. Very little of anything could grow here. Ahnle shook her head. It was very hard to understand how round-eyed Westerners thought. But she was trying. She wanted to go to America, to be free to live as she wished. That could never happen if she remained in Thailand.
And her most secret wish, one she kept close to her heart, was that she could take her son to America with her.
A shadow blotted out the sunlight. Ahnle looked up from her musings, expecting to see Rachel returning from a night spent with Dr. Reynard and a laboring Lao woman whose baby, Rachel had told her, was twisted sideways inside her.
“Little sister.”
Ahnle gasped. The figure standing over her was familiar, but not welcome.
“Good spirits, Brother,” she said formally. She bowed low before her male relative, the patterns of a lifetime of ritual holding true, although inside she was shaking with fear. “All is well in our village?” There was only one soul whose well-being she cared about in the village she’d left behind. Her baby. Her parents were dead. She’d made the dangerous journey from Laos with her aunt and uncle and three cousins, who had refused to acknowledge her since her disgrace.
“The village remains the same. Not good.” Her brother shrugged, staring at her so intently that Ahnle felt a prickle of unease. “You look good. They feed you well here.”
“The spirits are kind. There is enough to eat.” He continued to look her over appraisingly and Ahnle shivered in spite of the heat of the morning sun.
“My son?” Only the desperate need to know about her baby gave her the courage to ask the question outright. Her brother’s cryptic references alarmed her. Were they starving in her village? Had the rains washed away their fields, ruined their meager stores of rice and vegetables? Did her child go hungry?
“The boy is well. I have found a home for him.” Her brother’s tone was callous. He was a hard man, the head of her family. He was, after all, the son of her father’s first wife, as she was only a daughter of the second. He came and went as he pleased, it seemed, making the long journey down out of the mountains, across the river several times each dry season and even once in a while in the rainy season—if there was extra opium to sell.
“You do not mean to keep my son with you?” Ahnle felt her knees go weak and soft. She couldn’t have risen from the damp ground if she’d tried, yet she refused to show her brother how much anguish his words had caused. “Your new wife—”
“Has finally given me a son of my own. But Chengla and his wife have no sons. They will give your child ancestors to protect him. But you must give them money in return.”
“I give you all I have.” Rachel and Father Dolph gave her a few baht each week for the work she did. Twice before this, her brother had appeared in the camp to take it from her. Today she had no money at all. She tried not to think of the sour-faced Chengla and his lazy wife taking her baby. She couldn’t let that happen. She tried to look past her brother, hoping that Rachel or Father Dolph would appear and help her.
“The money you get from the unbelievers is not enough. I have found work for you. I have come to take you away.”
“Where?” Ahnle was not stupid. She was of no use to him if she returned to the village. Her brother meant to sell her away in the city. It was his right. She had heard from talking to other young women in the camp of how she would be expected to earn money in the city, and the knowledge turned her heart to stone.
“Bangkok. Chiang Mai is too close.”
But in Bangkok, so huge and so far away, no one would ever find her.
“When I have earned the money ne
cessary for Chengla and his woman to give my son a good home, I will keep the rest and go to America.” She spoke defiantly, despite her dread.
“You can go wherever you want to go.”
Her brother was lying and they both knew it. Even if the man her brother sent her to gave her money, it would be only a pittance. She wasn’t being hired for a job. Her brother was selling her, and not one of her people would lift a finger to help her, disgraced as she was. Only her new friends could save her and she had no way to tell them what was happening. And they would never know where she had gone.
“I’M SORRY, ASSISTANT Ambassador Singleton is unavailable. If you’ll leave your name and where you may be reached, I’ll see to it that he gets your message.” The very polite, perfectly groomed young woman behind the reception desk of the American embassy looked Rachel over with just a hint of alarm in her green eyes.
“I must see Ambassador Singleton.” There was a mirror on the wall behind the receptionist’s ornate gilt desk. Rachel didn’t even glance into it. She was aware how disheveled and travel-stained she looked. Two days on the road from Camp Six in the cab of a supply truck bound for Bangkok to pick up medical equipment couldn’t be compared to traveling first class. Add to that the strain of a week of anxious, sleepless nights filled with worry over Ahnle’s safety and no woman would look her best.
“I’m sorry.” The young woman glanced toward the two tall young marines standing guard nearby.
“I’m an American citizen. I need help. There must be someone I can talk to.” Rachel abandoned any pretense at polite conversation. The woman hesitated.
“The ambassador’s assistant, Mr. Bartley, is available.”
Rachel brushed her hair away from her cheek. “He’ll do.” In the jungle he’d been little help to either of them. Perhaps here, in his own element, he would be of more use.
“One moment, please.” The woman picked up a telephone and gestured Rachel toward a chintz-upholstered love seat by the window. Rachel was too restless to sit down. Several minutes passed before one of the ornately carved doors along the far wall of the room opened and Harrison Bartley appeared. He was dressed in a spotless white linen suit, white shirt and pale mauve tie. Rachel felt smaller and more disheveled than ever. To combat a sudden rush of insecurity, she moved forward with her hand outstretched.
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